Help & Advice

Bath & Body

Why use special products for skin and hair during pregnancy? Because women of childbearing age typically use more than 100 personal care products a day—among them are body wash, hand soaps, shampoos, conditioners, hair styling products, deodorant, body lotions, and exfoliators.

Unfortunately, most of these skin and hair products contain ingredients that can interfere with achieving pregnancy and carrying a healthy pregnancy to term. Triclosan, for example, is an ingredient that pregnant women and new moms should avoid, and it's commonly found in hand soap, body wash and even some toothpaste. Paraben preservatives, dibutyl pthalate, and other common ingredients in personal care products are xenoestrogens—substances that act like estrogen in the body and may result in pregnancy complications, low birth weight and reproductive disorders in children.

In addition to helping reduce your body's content of these types of synthetic estrogen, another reason to use pregnancy skin and hair products is for their gentleness. The sulfates and sudsing agents may suddenly cause allergic reactions such as itchy rash in pregnancy. They can also strip your skin of its natural oils, worsening your pregnancy itchy skin, dry skin and increasing your chances of severe stretch marks.